Our study aims to provide empirical evidence for and against the valid use of primary school students' ratings of three generic dimensions of teaching quality (classroom management, supportive climate, cognitive activation). We examine whether students discriminate between corresponding dimensions in different subjects, taking into account whether…

Background: Formative assessments are needed to enable monitoring how student knowledge develops throughout a unit. Constructed response items which require learners to formulate their own free-text responses are well suited for testing their active knowledge. However, assessing such constructed responses in an automated fashion is a complex task…

Previous research has focused on self-assessments rather than objective assessments for assessing teachers' technological knowledge (TK). Notwithstanding, empirical studies have failed to show stable relationships between self-assessments and objective assessments. In this study, we investigate the extent to which scenario-based self-assessments…

Background: Authentic situations are considered a source of learning due to their real world relevance. This can encourage learners to acquire new knowledge. Increasing digitisation and associated resources, such as professional development opportunities for teachers, technology tools, or digital equipment for schools enable the development and…

Comparing teachers' self-assessment to classes' assessment of quality of teaching can offer insights for educational research and be a valuable resource for teachers' continuous professional development. However, the quality of teaching needs to be measured in the same way across perspectives for this comparison to be meaningful. We used data from…

The German school system employs centrally organized performance assessments (some of which are called "VERA") as a way of promoting lesson development. In recent years, several German federal states introduced a computer-based performance testing system which will replace the paper-pencil testing system in the future. Scores from…

We investigated how the sequence of presenting social media sources in an unsupervised inductive learning setting supports the acquisition of source evaluation skills in two different age groups. Participants were 63 upper and 59 lower secondary students. They had to identify characteristics of trustworthiness while studying sources labeled as…

Online news literacy training has been so far insufficiently conducted and evaluated, and even less so with younger news consumers. Against the backdrop of online news cognitive processing, interventions against misinformation, and inquiry-based learning, we designed, conducted, and evaluated a pilot online news literacy training with 36…

The virtual school board (VSB) offers teachers a browser-based platform to support a multilevel, evidence-based educational plan. The present study examines teachers' use of the VSB. Based on technology acceptance model (TAM), 17 teachers from nine schools were interviewed about their use of the VSB. The evaluation was based on qualitative content…

This paper describes the development and validation of an instrument to assess how students deal with emotionally challenging classroom situations (the DECCS Questionnaire). The questionnaire is based on a vignette with one learning and one performance situation in a classroom, and is intended for students in grades 4 to 7. On a sample of N = 639…

Assessing text quality as an indication of underlying skills still remains challenging; irrespective of the approach, many studies struggle with reliability or validity problems. If writing is considered problem-solving, a report must make the reader understand the described situation and call for its mental reconstruction. Therefore, text quality…

The purpose of this study was to examine the writing skills of 7th- and 8th-grade students with a high proportion of migration background in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The study was part of the SchriFT project (2017-20), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. A writing task was given on the topic: "Why can we only…

In March 2018, metal construction kits were distributed to all elementary schools in Rhineland-Palatinate as part of the project called "Technikkiste" [translation from German: technology box] to promote STEM education. At the end of the year 2018, three more expansion sets followed. So far, no requests have been made to schools, even…

Teachers' emotional exhaustion is related to various detrimental outcomes, such as work absenteeism, intention to quit, impaired instructional quality, and lower student motivation. Since emotional exhaustion becomes evident as early as teacher training at university, the question is whether it would be possible to identify an individual…

In German primary schools, natural sciences and social studies are learned and taught in an integrative manner within a subject called Sachunterricht. To teach Sachunterricht in a high-quality manner, it is reasonable to assume that primary school teachers themselves require-- among other things, such as knowledge about pedagogy, teaching…